


men out of time

by rywaen



Series: Requests and Drabbles [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Drabble Collection, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Gen, M/M, Not Beta Read
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:18:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1849249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rywaen/pseuds/rywaen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of requests and drabbles previously only found on my tumblr involving Steve and Bucky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Magic Word

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on my [tumblr](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com) and find my [commission info](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com/commish+donation) there too.
> 
> This prompt was  
> northernlotus said:
> 
> Stucky, "You forgot to say the magic word."

"Ugh, Bucky, can we just  _go_  already? It’s getting dark and I’m cold.”

"Just hold on, I’ve almost got it," he told him, hunched over the sidewalk with his skinny arm shoved in between the bars of the drain, reaching as far as he could to try and get their ball back. They had been playing catch, Bucky teaching Steve how to really throw like he meant it, and it had bounced past the blond and fallen into the drain where Bucky was now determined to get it. 

The twelve year old’s shirt was dirty and damp and it would probably be stained in a few new places now, but Bucky didn’t care. That ball was the one he’d bought for Steve and himself to play with two years ago and they’d kept it in great condition up until now. It wasn’t just a  _ball_ , it was  _their ball_. 

"Buckyyy, c’mon! My mama’s gonna be worried if we don’t get back soon!" Ten year old Steve whined, wrapping his arms around his middle to try and keep some of his warmth in. "It’s just a ball, anyway. Can we go?"

Biting his lip and leaning into the drain even further, he finally grasped the curve of the ball and got a hold of it. He didn’t pull it out yet, just adjusted himself and made sure he’d be able to get it out before he turned his head and looked up at Steve.

"You didn’t say the magic word," he told him indignantly, making Steve roll his eyes.

“ _Please_  can we go?”

With a flourish, Bucky pulled the ball out and sat up with a grin that practically cracked his face in half. Seeing the ball in his friend’s hand, Steve lit up as well and clapped as Bucky stood and bowed at the waist. 

"Yeah, let’s go. I’m starving."

* * *

"You going out tonight?" Steve asked, watching as Bucky reached up and fixed his hair as he checked himself over in the dirty mirror they had set up in their bedroom. Their apartment was tiny; one bedroom, a kitchen that was no more than a stove and an icebox, and a living room that was comprised of their ripped up couch, their taped up radio, a well-worn chair, and a coffee table that wobbled. 

"Yeah, just got paid from my work down at the docks. Why, you wanna come with?"

"Buck, you know I can’t dance. There’s no point if I can’t dance and no girls even look my way."

"Well, maybe if you knew how, you’d get a dance partner or two every now and then. Hell, maybe you could just dance on your own and attract partners from every which way. Ever think of that?"

"What, like you do?" Steve asked with a laugh, shaking his head as he looked back down to the paper he was sketching on. "Not like it’d happen anyway. Where am I gonna learn how to dance?"

As he sketched absently — his subject was just the dried flowers he’d hung on the wall with a nail, the ones from his ma’s funeral a few years back — Bucky turned on his heel and gave Steve a hard look, hands in his pockets and his tongue swiping at his lower lip as he thought. 

"I could teach ya."

"What?" Steve asked, looking up with a smirk, not thinking Bucky was serious. That is, until he saw the way his eyebrows were drawn together, clearly in thought. "Buck, you would teach me?"

"Yeah. Why not?" He grinned and crossed his arms over his chest and nodded at him. "You just gotta ask." 

Steve laughed and set his paper aside as he stood up and brushed himself off. “Bucky Barnes, will you teach me how to dance?”

"No," he said shortly, making Steve frown.

"Well, if you’re just gonna be a jerk about it—"

"Steve, you gotta say the magic word. Ask  _properly_.”

With a huff and a roll of his eyes, Steve asked again. “Bucky Barnes, will you  _please_  teach me how to dance?”

“ _Well_ , if you ask so  _nicely_ —” he cut himself off, laughing as he took Steve’s hand and dragged him into the living room and switched on the radio, finding a station that didn’t crackle too badly so that they could dance.

* * *

S.H.I.E.L.D was gone. Completely dismantled from the inside out because of the leaked information. They had known that it was going to happen, but it felt like the loss had been worse than even Steve could have predicted. 

Hydra, or what was left of it, was even deeper in hiding than they had been before. Which, while it was good that they weren’t directly attacking people anymore, meant that it was hard to find anyone else responsible. 

After almost six months after falling into the Patomac, Steve hadn’t seen Bucky even once. Not a glimpse, not the edges of his coat, not the feeling of being watched from a distance. Nothing. 

For a while now, it all felt hopeless. He’d been putting all of his time and energy into finding him, but it felt as if there was nothing to find. After all of the whispers about the Winter Soldier being a ghost, now he truly seemed to be one. 

"It’s alright, man. He’ll turn up," Sam had reassured him, time and again. It was always the same. "It’ll be okay" or "I’m sure he’s around here somewhere" or "Well, you know what they said about what you’re looking for always being in the last place you’d look." None of it helped, but he appreciated that Sam was even trying. Without Sam being there, Steve was pretty sure that he would have gone off the deep end. For a while, he hadn’t been able to sleep, living off of one cup of coffee to the next. 

He could honestly say that he was a mess. 

After a few months scouring Europe and all of the Hydra bases that they could find and infiltrate, they went back home. Steve, quite literally, decided to head back to where he had once lived in Brooklyn. Some part of him had always wondered if that was where Bucky would be after all this time.

Their old apartment was gone; most likely torn down before being turned into a new row of apartments that didn’t look like they had been around since 1934. 

Bucky wasn’t there. 

"I want you to come home now, Buck. I miss you," he spoke to the air around him, his eyes slipping shut as he stood on the corner across from where his old apartment once was. He breathed in the Brooklyn night air and his hands curled into fists at his sides, willing himself not to lose it.

"You forgot the magic word."


	2. Need

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> aegyoaway said:
> 
> Stucky: "I need this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can find me on my [tumblr](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com) and find my [commission info](http://skinnvsteve.tumblr.com/commish+donation) there too.

It was beyond the fact that their time apart had put a rift the size of the grand canyon between them. It was more than the glances that had long ago been smiles had now turned into distant stares and frowns. More than that, it was the fact that Bucky couldn’t sleep. For that matter, Steve couldn’t either. They both pretended that they could, sometimes apart, mostly together. 

Above it all, it was the fact that Bucky remembered everything. 

It took a week after the Patomac for Bucky to completely shake off the last of the programming to make him forget. They kept him under not just because they didn’t need him at times, but because he fought back each and every time he began to remember. They had learned that the hard way. The wipes had become more and more frequent when he was out for long periods of time. His final mission notwithstanding, the longest he had ever been out of cryostasis had been a week and a half and even that had been pushing it. 

But now, there was no Hydra to fight, no wipes to come and take it all away for a short amount of time, no missions to focus on when he had nothing but static in his head.

Now, there were sleepless nights and Steve and the ruins of S.H.I.E.L.D and Sam Wilson and Steve and memories that had been there all along, buried deep, with  _Steve_  being the one thing that had never truly gotten buried. And it wasn’t that he couldn’t sleep because of what he had done, it was that he couldn’t accept it. It was that acceptance that was as slow moving as molasses, sticky and thick as it moved through him, body and mind and bones and muscles all needing to accept that this was what he was now.

This, that had been used as a machine, as a tool, as something that did not abide by ‘kill or be killed’ but ‘kill; there is no alternative’ instead. 

Accepting that it was him who had ended so many lives, that he had been his body that had fallen slack and pliant when they shoved his memories down, had taken his name and given him a gun and a purpose and a command instead. 

And Steve couldn’t accept that he had let it all happen.

Frozen for seventy years, having thought from his last moment alive to his first moment alive again that Bucky was gone. Gone and buried in snow and ice, just like he had been. 

They, men out of time, dead men walking, lay awake because things had happened without their control and now they had to accept it.

Coping was easier than acceptance, and so they both decided that it was what they could handle. Coping worked, at least for now.

Together, they coped by going to the gym. Physical violence was an excellent way of working through anger and frustration, be it from whatever source. Sometimes they stuck to inanimate objects being their victims; punching bags and test dummies and holograms that Stark had set up for them in the tower. Other times, they turned to each other for that release that they both sought out.

"I want you to spar with me," Bucky told him, appearing out of thin air behind Steve as he had just begun wrapping his hands to work out with the punching bag. His eyes were dark with even darker circles beneath them. Hair a mess and hands curled into fists, Steve could tell that this wasn’t a good day. 

"You sure? Last time we did we broke through a wall," Steve reminded him, smirking as he glanced over at the wall in question that was still being remodeled. 

"I’m sure."

"Okay. Hand to hand or open combat?"

"Hand to hand."

For the sake of breaking as little as possible, they spent a good few minutes clearing a space in the middle of the gym, deciding to use the area more like a wrestling ring instead of an open floor. They would minimize damage that way, and hopefully things would stay even and fair.

The first round had them both getting in a few good hits; Bucky landed a right hook to Steve’s jaw, Steve returned the favor by hitting him right in the solar plexus. It ended when Steve stumbled back after narrowly avoiding a knee to the groin and he ended up on his ass with a laugh.

The second round ended with Bucky becoming even more furious than he had been to begin with. It was obvious that Steve was holding back, especially since every time Bucky gave him an opening, he didn’t take it. Steve lost, again, by landing on his back with his wrist in Bucky’s vice grip, ready to break it if he were really an enemy.

Separating, they came back for the third round, Bucky quickly getting in close and opening himself completely to Steve’s fist, which stopped mere centimeters from his cheek. They both froze, Bucky’s eyes hard and furious with Steve as he shoved him back with both hands on his chest. 

"Steve, just fucking hit me!" he spat in his face, snarling all the while.

"I just— You’re clearly not having a good day. Why do you want this so badly?"

"I need this!" 

Freezing, Steve met Bucky’s eyes and deflated when he saw the desperation there. He had come to him because he knew that Steve was one of the only ones he could actually spar with while not having to fear about truly hurting him. Natasha was good enough to not let him ever truly hurt her, but she was nowhere to be found. Bucky needed him, needed  _this_ , and so far he was being let down.

"Okay. Alright, I’m sorry. Let’s do this."

For the next round, they stayed close, Steve nodding just once before they began to let him know that he was going to play properly this time. And that he did. Bucky gave him an opening again to test him, and this time he took it. Landing a square hit to his jaw, Bucky slid back far enough to have to take a moment to shake it off before he rushed back in. 

They moved in unison, blocking and punching and kicking with expert ease and the intention to hurt and be hurt. 

By the end of it all, they were both bruised and battered. The difference now was that Bucky smiled when Steve caught his eye. Small, as the smile was, the movement still managed to pull open a cut in Bucky’s lip, making him taste blood. He reached up and touched the cut, pulling away his fingertips to see them stained crimson.

"Hey," Steve spoke up, having stepped closer while the brunet was distracted by his lip. "Feeling better now?"

"Yeah," he said, nodding as he licked the blood away from his lip, "you know, I am. Much better."

"Good. I’m glad you told me."

"Well, you were being a big baby."

They shared a laugh before falling silent, Bucky still wiping at his lip while Steve reached up and slid his thumb along the edge of his friend’s lip. The motion drew Bucky’s eyes up from where they had been locked on the floor to instead meet Steve’s, searching for an answer within his gaze. 

"You needed that," he repeated, voice soft as he leaned in, "and I need this."

Their lips pressed together, the soft tang of iron between them as Steve’s tongue slid along Bucky’s cut lip, the brunet responding in kind as his hands gripped the blond’s waist and pulled him close. 

In the end, they both got what they needed.


End file.
